Groupon splurges $260m on Korean deals firm as cash bleed continues

Groupon has announced that it will be buying Ticket Monster, the Korean firm owned by its daily deals rival Living Social, as it reports another quarterly loss.

The voucher bazaar said it would pay $260m in cash and stocks for the company, which offers a "broad range of product, local and travel offers".

Groupon added that the company, known locally as TMON, has annual billings of more than $800m and gets around half of its sales from mobile devices.

At the same time, the firm said that its sales had lifted slightly in the third quarter to $595.1m, up 4.7 per cent, although it still made a net loss of $2.58m. New chief exec Eric Lefkofsky, tasked with turning the firm's fortunes around, said that the company's performance in mobile had improved, with a record nine million app downloads in the quarter.

The company said it expects revenue in the next quarter of between $690m and $740m, with operating income of between $40m and $60m, affected by market spending to drive adoption of its Pull marketplace and the rejig of Google's Gmail service.

Gmail now separates email promotions into their own tab in the inbox, causing fewer people to click on Groupon's daily deals emails, CFO Jason Child said in an interview with Bloomberg. ®